Nordic Skates Made of Inlines

Introduction: Nordic Skates Made of Inlines

Let's say you live in a country that have lots of ice in the winters with frozen lakes and seawater. That's the case fore me, I live in Sweden, to be more precise in Stockholm.

A nice activity is to ice skate when there's an opportunity. But the equipment is rather expensive according to me. I figured out that if you buy a couple of Inlines an mount them on a traditional ice skate profile you will save a lot of money.

Fore this project you will need:
. Ice skates profile
. A pair of Inlines
. Some screws and bolts
. Angle iron (see pictures)
. Small piceses of wood

The mentioned items, you can bye on ebay or at any similar sites. Maybe you have it at home..

The total cost fore me for the components was less than 200 swedish crowns (30 US. dolars) including a pair of inline skates.

Step 1: Disassembly

The first thing that you have to do is to disassemble the binding from the aluminum ice skate profile. You will also disconnect the wheels from the Inlines.

Step 2: Mounting the Angle Iron

Mount the angle iron at the rearmost wheel placement seen in the pictures. Use a piece of wood as a distance instead of the wheel.

Step 3: Mounting to the Skate-profile

Mount the angle iron and the attached inline wheel-row to the ice skate profile.

Step 4:

Also mount the front angle iron as in the picture. For stability mount it at the oposite side according to the rearmost.

Step 5:

Now you will mount the Inline-shoe with the attached angle iron, on the Ice skate profile. Make sure that the shoe will be parallel to the profile. In some cases it can be mounted so that the profile will get a slightly angle "outwards" probably like 2-3 degrees.

Step 6: Get Out and Try

The skates are now ready to try. I was really impressed how functional they were for such a small budget!

I also have a great interest in ice sailing, especially Kitewing-sailing (maybe I will post a instructable in that subject too). The skates worked just fine also in that application.

Please let me know what you think about the instructable and if you have something to add.

If you are interested Kitewing-sailing, I recommend you to watch a clip in which I sail my wing on a wonderful day with good weather conditions. http://youtu.be/w4xJsuM-1mI

Nice! I've been thinking about doing something similar to my inline skates, but instead of turning them into ice skates, I'd be adding pneumatic wheels so that I can use them on the "exellent" roads we have here in the north ;) How stable are they to skate on? How well does the angle iron hold up? The version I had in mind included 2 parallell pieces of 5mm flat stock steel bent in front and in the back to accommodate the larger wheels but not raise the feet unneccesarily off the ground.. if that makes sense... But, if your system works well, I might not need to use such heavy material..

Hi David! Thanks for your comment. Your pneumatic-skate-project sounds very interesting and challenging but I like it a lot. Are you going to have a couple of tubes on your back loaded with compressed air, like a diver or firefighter?

To your question, if you weigh more than 70 kg, I think an extra pair of angle-iron would be good to have mounted in the middle of the profile. For me and my weight (65kg) the skates are surprisingly stable.

I'm not sure if I understand how you are going to build your profile, if you showed me some kind a sketch maybe I can give you better advice.

No, by pneumatic tires, I mean air filled, as opposed to the solid wheels most inlines are equipped with. :) User TimAnderson made a set using a pair of slalom boots to use for "kite skating" or some other, but I can't seem to find them now.http://www.allterraskates.com This is a version made by Powerslide, wich seems very nice, but a bit pricy too. So, my idea: make a bracket that kan hold larger air filled wheels, and be able to change back to original configuration.

Have you seen Land Rollers? The standing on the axle part lets you have really big wheels without anything getting stuck between what holds the wheel and the wheel. (Roller blades do not handle walnut shell fragments well)

Wow! I've never seen such beautiful ice! I'd heard about long ice skating trails in Sweden, but just assumed it would be dark. Thanks for posting this! The skates would now be one less expense if I make the trip.